Last week was yes another complicated one for the Italian Prime Minister. After having to deal with international criticism for accepting to attend an event in Libya following the release of the Lockerbie bomber from Scottish prisons Berlusconi hoped to regain control of the news.
Firstly, he announced that he would be meeting with the head of the Italian Catholic Church during an event that was to mark his reconciliation with the church. Then, he launched an outright attack through the courts to the "La Repubblica" newspapers - at the center of the attack were 10 questions the newspaper has been posing for several months one, considered by the Prime Minister to be defamatory.
These two actions seemed to give Berlusconi the upper-hand but they both backfired badly.
The head of the Italian Catholic Church refused to meet with him. In part, becuase of their anger with Berlusconi's newspaper, "Il Giornale", which accused the editor of the Church's newspaper, L'Avvenire, of allegedly having molested, over the phone, a young woman in the past because she was allegedly the girlfriend of the editor's ex-boyfriend.
Still with us? The case is further confused because it seems "Il Giornale" obtained this information through court records that not even the judge responsible for the accusation of molestation has seen yet.
Then a flurry of articles from English, American, French, Spanish and Italian newspapers all accuse Berlusconi of trying to stifle freedom of the press in Italy since he is suing a newspaper for asking questions. Questions that many others have asked over the past months and Berlusconi has yet to give convincing answers about. You can read the questions in English here.
Perhaps the weightiest attack was a headline article by the Wall Street Journal indicating that the refusal of the Vatican to meet with Berlusconi is very humiliating and highlighting the issues surrounding his private life to a much larger extend than ever within American media.
Berlusconi is trying to play down all these issues, saying he is focused on more important issues and, one assumes, may be hoping that attention will soon turn elsewhere.
